Stewart On Aging and Mortality
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Sir Patrick Stewart is seventy-seven today, and realizes that there are more days behind him than ahead of him.
“There is a not a day goes by where I don’t think of my mortality,” he said. “I am seventy-six [before today’s birthday] years old. I am married to a much younger woman and I cannot see her without reflecting on the differences in our ages and expectations and so forth.
“And this has been a horrible three or four years for my profession. My generation has been decimated. So many actors have gone.”
But Stewart is upbeat. “One of the great things about being an actor, maybe the best thing, is that if you are working nothing is wasted.”
His positive attitude includes dealing with the inevitable health issues that crop up when one gets older. Stewart has osteoarthritis in the hands and the treatment may be as painful as the actual arthritis at times. “I recently had eight injections in my hands, four into each knuckle,” he said. “After the third one I thought, ‘I can’t do any more. This is too unpleasant.’ And then you remind yourself, ‘Come on, Patrick, this is all good experience.’ Nothing is ever is wasted. You store it away and one day you might need it. I might need to pretend to experience some pain. Now I know what the hell it feels like.”
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